Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Edward Griew

print this page

That Evening Two Great Noises

That evening two great noises hammered
rigid, framed raw within me,
my heart. Blood, my blood and flesh
shivered, jellied (would burst me);
long heave-breast, heart-beat quick with
body shaking : only but held
hard together with stiff bone, with
heart, my heart big with noise and—

o . . . love, did you hear them—
and you there by, and I ;
and I, but hardly, by you—
did hear their, hot with pain hear
their laughter, innocent
not unkind chatter—like bitter
bullets, their tin-tray din?

(And I but hardly by you;
and you there, half perhaps with
an ear balanced to catch their
bright beads of carpet parley,
but not for me, not half even a
hand or turn of the head to me
home, for staunch of the drilling hurt.)

Well, then we all played music—
was it music or the very tearing
soul of man ?—that grasped and (high
I taut shrieked " Pity ...") swung my (oh
I " dear love!" gasped) my bound parched
pulse through the fever-dirge of the
mad horn. Or voice or violin, both,
thrilled forward with desire my
a-stretch nerves, or screaming them scraped.

(And you, as though the music swallowed,
you lost in masked thought or
in music's centre, you were there—.
and I, it seemed to me, not by,
who need had, heaven knows, need had
of hand or turn of head home
for stilling of pulse and of plucked nerve.)

Two such terrible noises (and you by!).
And all myself within me riot
for so little to ask :—still you by
and only I, whole, present to you, in bathing quiet.

 

Page(s) 18

Back to top